A new, federally-funded research initiative has brought together an international team of researchers, state government, local government and private industry, to establish and rigorously test a practical approach to achieving baseline coastal monitoring at multiple ‘coastal reference sites’ around the Australian open coastline. Analogous and complementary to existing coastal water-level and ocean wave monitoring programs that already exist around the Australian continent, the purpose of this present effort is to initiate and demonstrate the practical capability and application of sustained, automated and ongoing coastline monitoring in support of coastal research, coastal engineering and coastal management. Initially, ten ‘pilot’ coastal reference sites in New South Wales have been established, and the immediate use of these data to underpin new developments in modelling and forecasting of seasonal to multi-decadal shoreline variability and change is underway.